When the center plait or buttonhole strip of a garment, such as a man's shirt or a woman's dress, is connected to the shirt front pattern part, the center plait pattern part is usually folded under along its side edges and its ends are placed in overlying relationship with respect to the shirt front pattern part. When the center plait is sewn to the shirt front pattern part to form the shirt front assembly, the ends of the center plait extend beyond the top and bottom edges of the shirt front pattern part. In the past, after the center plait had been attached to the shirt front pattern part to form the shirt front assembly, a bundle of shirt front assemblies was allowed to collect at the sewing station and another worker transferred the bundle to another station where the ends of the center plait of each assembly were trimmed by a third worker so that the cut ends of each center plait were approximately even or coextensive with the edges of the shirt front pattern part. The upper end of the center plait, usually the leading end as the pieces are processed through the sewing machine, were cut with a curved cut or an angled cut to match the neck opening of the garment, while the lower or trailing end of the center plait was cut with a straight cut that matched the lower edge or tail of the garment.
In order to fabricate the shirt front assemblies it was necessary to first attach the center plait to the shirt front panel, stack the shirt front assemblies in a bundle at the sewing station, transfer the bundles to a cutting station cut the ends of each center plait, restack the shirt front assemblies, and transfer the cut bundle to a subsequent work station where subsequent stitching and other garment fabricating functions were performed. The manual steps of sewing, stacking, transferring, cutting and restacking the garment parts in the process of applying the center plaits to the garment panels is onerous, expensive, and there is some likelihood of misplacing bundles of garment parts or individual garment parts in the manufacturing process. Moreover, the more times the shirt fronts are manually handled in the separate sewing and cutting operations, the more likely is the tendency toward non-uniformity in the finished products.